I'm a Christian. Should I join a local church?

Since I don't have a ton of time to breathe write lately, I might start a really-occasional series where I give obvious answers to questions that for some reason people feel the need to ask. Up first, the question of whether a Christian should commit to a local church.

Now there are many ways to answer this matter, but I'll just break it down into 4 logical steps and let you take it from there. Here we go.

1) The first and most basic tenet of the Christian faith is "Jesus is Lord".
2) The New Testament is chock full of "one-another" commands which are impossible to obey apart from commitment to a local church.
3) By remaining uninvolved in a church, you declare that you have absolutely no intent of obeying these numerous commands.
4) Which is, shall we say, incompatible with the statement that Jesus is Lord.

And that's all you need to know my thoughts on this matter.

Apostasy and the Church

The book of Hebrews contains what is probably the most-quoted exhortation to church membership:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:23-25)

Familiar verses, no doubt. But did you ever notice the reason for this exhortation? The verses that follow explain why it is so vital to meet together and encourage each other. Why is being part of a church such an urgent need?

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:23-31)

Meet together, because apostasy is horrible. Encourage one another, because the judgment brought on by apostasy is too terrifying for words.

This is not the only place in Hebrews where this pattern is seen. The same thing is clearly taught in 3:12-19, and 12:15-17 strongly suggests it as well. We are to watch out for each other, exhort each other, do everything possible to keep each other out of sin and strong in the faith, because God will judge the unrepentant apostate with the eternal fires of hell.

If you separate yourself from Christ's people, ultimate apostasy will not be far behind.

If you claim to be Christ's, yet are not part of a church, you are a liar and a fool playing a fool's game. Get in a church - a real church - now. Before it's too late, and you find that, like Esau, you have become so hardened you are incapable of repentance.

Churches and Debt

Should a church carry debt?

No.

Oh, you were hoping for more? Fine. Here are a few reasons it's a bad idea. I mean, besides the fact that debt is a bad idea for everyone. Here are some that apply especially to a church.

Possible damage to witness. Want to make sure someone won't hear a word you say about Jesus? Borrow a bunch of money from him and fail to pay it back. The gospel is offensive as it is; the last thing we need to do is offend someone by sinning against them before preaching it to them!

1 Peter 3:15 is the apologist/evangelist's favorite verse, and the context is applicable here: proclaiming Christ while suffering. Peter makes it plain: if you want to preach Christ through suffering, it should be suffering for doing good and not for evil (see also 4:12-19, Heb 12:12-17). If you want to minister, don't let your unrighteous behavior stand in the way (and don't dare claim the just consequences of your actions as 'persecution'). And don't ever let Romans 2:24 be accurate for you.

Want to give unbelievers an opportunity to blaspheme? Want to make sure they don't trust you? Borrow and fail to repay. They are downright giddy whenever a church files bankruptcy; why even take that chance?

Compromising the message to keep crowds large and the money flowing. So you're preaching through one of Paul's epistles and come to a passage that contains a really unpopular position. If you preach it faithfully, people might leave. A lot of people. Maybe even some rich people who give a lot of money. Enough people and money that, if they leave, you won't have enough money to pay the mortgage, or maybe even some salaries.

You can preach the Word faithfully, and take your chances. Or you can take the edge off a little, and make it more likely they'll stay (and keep giving). What do you do?

Oh, we all know how we hope we would answer this. But it doesn't take much of a look at the evangelical landscape to see how often the wrong answer prevails. Praise God when pastors stay faithful to the Word when under this pressure. It can't be easy, and far too many cave week after week. Wouldn't it be best to avoid being in this situation to begin with?

What will you do when you lose tax-exempt status? Note: not 'if'. It should be obvious by now that tax-exempt status will eventually be revoked. It may be a pure money grab (churches own a lot of property and receive a lot of gifts they don't pay taxes on), but more likely it will come as punishment for refusing to bow to Caesar on one of several issues.

Would it surprise anyone if, by the time you finish reading this paragraph, the government announces the revocation of  tax exemption for any church which refuses to (1) pay for the murder of unborn children per the HHS mandate, (2) bless serial sodomy as if it's the sacred, God-ordained institution of marriage, and/or (3) appoint female elders/pastors? It may not be as immediate as I think, but it's certain to happen eventually. Either bow on these issues (or whatever the next issue will be) and functionally cease to be a church of Christ, or pay up.

When it happens, it will affect your church's finances dramatically. Property taxes and other taxes must now be paid. Offerings are no longer tax-exempt, and will likely decrease. Expenses go up, income goes down. That's not a good dynamic when you're already in debt. It's really, really, really bad.

Your finances will change. Make no mistake, if this isn't what causes it, something else will. Maybe the big plant in town will close and half your congregation will be out of work. Your biggest donors will die or move away. A hundred people leave to plant another church. Whatever it is, things change, and you could go through a financial dry season. If your budget absolutely needs everything to continue at current levels or better indefinitely, you're setting yourself up for disaster.

Paying interest from tithes/offerings. You know, it just feels different when it's money given to a church for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel to the ends of the earth. Someone stealing from an employer is bad, but if his employer's a church, it's outrageous. Want to waste your money on pointless junk? Whatever. Squander money given for ministry on pointless junk, and don't be surprised if there's a wee bit of outrage, and it's tough to say it's not justified. And make no mistake - interest payments are a waste.

Consider a church with $1million in debt at 4% interest. If it receives $500k in offerings annually, an entire month of giving goes to nothing except paying interest. No ministry function, just interest payments. With that $40k, you could pay much of the cost of an additional full-time staff member, or several part-timers or interns, or support a missionary family pretty well, or provide benevolence ministry to hurting families in the congregation, or... Or, you could give it to the bank, for the past favor of lending you money for a new building/media system/parking lot/whatever before you could pay for it (or you didn't really need it, but decided to get it because you could).

Yes, there are benefits to getting those things now rather than waiting for them. But there's also a cost. And I suspect the ongoing cost will always outweigh the short-term benefits.

If you build it, they won't necessarily come. Pardon my rant within a rant here, but the "Field of Dreams" attitude pervasive in evangelicalism is just absurd. It goes like this. We have an old church building with room for 500. We've grown from 200 to about 450 recently, and some weeks we're at capacity. So we should build a bigger church, with room for 5,000, and 'trust God' to keep bringing growth to fill it (and increased offerings to pay of the mortgage which we can't currently afford).

Let's say it works, and that church experiences explosive growth - it triples in size in a short time! Guess what? It's still at less than 30% capacity, and the incredibly larger church still won't be able to afford the mortgage! And that's even assuming the new attenders give at the same rate as the old faithfuls, which is far from a given.

An extreme example? Maybe. But you probably can think of a church that did something very similar, building so big and borrowing so much that they needed to quadruple or more in size (and giving) to have any chance of keeping up with the mortgage (not to mention the greatly increased operating costs). And this is always done under the banner of "faith".

You know what faith isn't? Doing something irresponsible and hoping God will bail you out. Or, trusting God to do something He hasn't specifically promised to do. You know what requires faith? Living obediently to God's commands and according to His revealed wisdom (check what Proverbs says about debt), and trusting God to provide your needs when you live according to His revealed will. And if God doesn't provide for you to have a church with a 12,000-seat sanctuary, faith is being content with what He has provided.

The upside - what a great opportunity! So what do you do if you've accumulated too much debt and want to repent and pay it off (or if you inherited it from a previous generation of church leadership)? There are all sorts of materials available for churches looking to get out of debt, and some of them are actually useful (and not the church-growth and giving-manipulation crap that got you in the predicament in the first place). I'd probably check with Crown Financial or other similar organization for help with the how-to.

But the how-to details are almost beside the point. If you're in that position, one way to work some good from it is to use it to define what your church is about, and get rid of the chaff. It's time to prioritize, to emphasize what is necessary and scale back (or eliminate outright) what is not.

When faced with a budget crisis, any serious person will do exactly that. You look at your income and expenses, and prioritize. Home? Gotta have a place to live. Food? Gotta have some - but you can scale back the cost of groceries, and eliminate restaurants entirely if needed. Cable TV? You can live without it. And so on. You wind up with a prioritized list - if we can only do one thing with our money this month, what will it be? What do we pay second? If some unexpected money comes in, what will we pay next? Providing food, shelter, and clothing for your children is more important than tickets to sporting events. Pay for necessities first, and only then can you put money on luxuries.

As a church, is there any reason you shouldn't do the same thing? (And while this is about church debt, it would be a pretty good thing for non-indebted churches to do as well.) What are the things that every church absolutely must do? Having someone devoted to studying and teaching God's Word is absolutely necessary; having a full-time ventriloquist for puppet shows in the children's ministry is just a luxury. A really creepy luxury.

So if you're in debt, don't resist the opportunity it's trying to force on you. Search the scriptures to find what the church is to be about. Teach that to your people. Then cut out the unnecessary fluff, and go and do what is best.

Church on Christmas?

This year, Christmas falls on a Sunday, which means it's time once again for the debate about what to do with church services. Some churches will meet on Sunday as scheduled or on a modified schedule, and some others will shift everything to Saturday.

What do I think? Of course churches should meet on Christmas Sunday. Why in the world wouldn't we? Because it's a holiday - a holy day? Yes, why would we want to gather together as the body of Christ to worship God on a holy day? That would be silly.

Just so I'm clear - I don't just disagree with the opposing position. I don't even understand why it's a question in the first place. I cannot think of one solitary reason why we should move services when Christmas falls on a Sunday. In fact, in years where Christmas falls on some other day, I would love to have an extra service on Christmas morning (granted, many churches will have Christmas Eve services instead, which is nice).

So here's my request - if you have a reason why we shouldn't meet on Sunday, let me know. Particularly if you favor moving from Sunday, I would love to hear the reasoning. And then we can take those reasons and ask whether we should meet on Easter.

I do not understand. I do not comprehend. Please help. Thanks.

Going Solo

A few weeks ago, I was listening to Dave Ramsey on a Friday afternoon drive. The show is about financial responsibility, with a particular focus on eliminating debt, and Friday's shows are largely dedicated to celebrating with people who have recently escaped debt. One debt-free story that day caught my attention. This couple had begun the process in earnest, after however many months of budgeting and sacrificing, they had grown a little weary. Intellectually it made sense to get out of debt, they believed it was a good idea to go about it so intensely, but the process was really, really hard. So when they saw that a live show was coming to their area, they went and gathered with thousands of others who were fighting the same debt battle they were. Refreshed and encouraged, they were able to continue the fight with renewed energy and persevere to victory.

When I heard them tell their story, all I could think was, I know where I really need to be Sunday morning!

This couple clearly understood that when you're in a difficult struggle, it helps tremendously to be mutually encouraged with others in the same situation. Share your victories and failures, help each other put the past behind them and move on, encourage one another to persevere. Without that, it's easy for a good idea to fall apart when things get too rough.

Many others in all sorts of circumstances get this concept as well. Substance abuse support groups, divorce recovery groups, playgroups for little kids (really, so their moms can get together), people training for marathons together, whatever. If it's a hard but worthwhile goal, people everywhere know they need to support each other.

So why is it that so many supposed self-professed Christians don't seem to get this? Or they understand and just don't care?

We've seen stats about how many claim to be Christians yet never go to church. I'm sure we've all heard cries of LEGALISM!!!1! whenever someone suggests that Christians should commit to a church and actually attend. Heaven help you if you suggest something like joining a small group or doing anything beyond attending on Sunday morning. The voices clamoring against church membership (or the organized church itself!) are legion, many of which belong to people who profess to be in Christ!

And this is where we could recount the many Biblical arguments for church membership - the myriad 'one another' commands, the fact that the church is where Jesus hangs out, the incongruity between claiming to love Jesus while despising his bride, the illustration of being part of the body, the occasional outright command, etc.

But even if none of this was true, not even a single bit, claiming to be a Christian and not being committed to a church would still be colossally stupid. Look, the Christian life is hard. There are bound to be numerous times where you're tempted to give up entirely. All the other things listed above that people know they need help to persevere through - living as a faithful Christian is harder than any of them, maybe all of them combined. So who would ever think it's a good idea to make a go of it alone?

I would suspect that if your life as a Christian is easy enough without being mutually committed to a congregation of fellow believers, your life isn't remotely Christian.

If you're for some reason claiming to follow Jesus, yet remain defiantly disobedient and utterly foolish regarding his church, I urge you to stop pretending and finally choose one. Either obey Jesus and be part of the chosen vessel for displaying God's glory, or stop claiming his name.

One Body, Many Members

"If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together."

I think I may have been missing something on a familiar passage of scripture for years. Not that I've been getting it wrong, but I think my understanding of it has been far too limited, and only recently have I started to reconsider.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul begins a dissertation on spiritual gifts, their proper use, the perspective to keep regarding them, etc. In this chapter he exhorts the Corinthian church to understand their gifts in relation to each other - they are gifts assigned by God (11) for mutual edification (7). They are not given in isolation, but each member has something to contribute to the whole, and is in turn dependent upon the whole (12ff). He makes his point by comparing the church to a body, where every part contributes to the others and needs the others. A body without hands or eyes would not be functioning properly, nor would a pancreas on its own be very useful. Similarly, the church is functioning sub-optimally if genuine gifts are suppressed or withheld, and those who isolate themselves from the church are about as useful as a chunk of liver doing its own thing. Those of us in the church both contribute to each other and need each other, and are united as members of one body, with Christ as our head. When one part suffers, we all do; when one rejoices, we all do as well.

Nothing too controversial there, I think. Anyway, here's where I think I had been missing the boat. I've always read this as concerning individuals within a single local congregation. And it certainly does mean that! In fact, just take a moment to consider all the implications of this truth for your local church - an end of jealousy and factions, sacrificial love for each other, total devotion to each other and commitment to work for the good of the whole. When this truth takes hold, it is a beautiful thing to see.

But what I believe I was missing was the universal application of this passage. That is, we are not just part of the body consisting of our local congregations. We are part of the body of Christ, joined together with all other believers in all the world, now, in all history, and forever. While I am joined in Christ to the fellow members of my church, I am also united to those in the church a few blocks away, and that other church across the city, and one in Kansas, and Mexico, and France, India, and the furthest reaches of the earth. If we are in Christ we are united, regardless of where we live or which congregation we attend. So here are a few implications:

1) I have a closer bond to fellow Christians I've never met than I do to unbelieving friends and even family. If you are in Christ, the same is true for you as well.

2) When one part is honored, all rejoice with it. There is no room for jealousy or rivalry among true churches. When legitimate good news comes regarding another church, we should rejoice. No jealous "why them and not us?" No sniping or backbiting. Just rejoicing for the way God has blessed our brothers.

3) If one part suffers, we all suffer. This was the attitude of the Macedonian church which, when they heard about the extreme suffering of the church in Jerusalem, gave extremely generously despite their own poverty. It 's an attitude that is once again being put at the forefront today, as a devastating tragedy hit Japan. The churches there, the people we are closer to than a brother, who we are united together with us in Christ, are suffering greatly. And we, their brothers, have a chance to help them out. This is what Churches Helping Churches was created for - to help the brethren in time of need. If you don't give through them, please consider another charity or way to help our hurting fellow believers, in Japan and elsewhere.

No true Scotsman would write a post like this

There is a logical fallacy commonly known as the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. For those who aren't familiar with it, here's the classic story used to illustrate it:

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the "Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again." Hamish is shocked and declares that "No Scotsman would do such a thing." The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing."

Why bring this up? It seems that NTS has become the accusation du jour for atheists/fools to hurl at Christians. A typical exchange will go a little something a-like-a this-a.

Atheist: There are many Christians who are evil, wicked, immoral, reprehensible, etc.

Christian: Anyone who does such things has shown himself to not be a Christian.

Fool: A-ha! It's the No True Scotsman fallacy! By relying on such a fallacy you show the weakness of your position, and admit defeat! You lose, sucka!

So the question before us today is, is this a proper place to cry 'fallacy'? Let's break down the fallacy and see what exactly is being said.

What you have is group A with essential and necessary membership requirements; everyone who meets the requirements is part of the group, and everyone who is in the group meets all the requirements. In math proof speak, they are "if and only if". In the Scotsman fallacy, the requirement is "being Scottish" (whether born in Scotland, born of Scottish parents and/or just lives in Scotland, the exact definition is beyond the scope of this paper). A man born of Scottish parents in Glasgow is a Scotsman, a German born in Berlin or New Zealand is not. For the group "Pitchers for the Atlanta Braves", the requirements would be (1) a Major League Baseball player (2) for the Atlanta Braves (3) who plays the position of pitcher. Anyone who meets all three requirements is in the group, anyone who meets zero, one, or two isn't. Clear? Mmmmkay.

Next, you have some separate, unrelated issue B, usually a negative condition, such as the acts of the Aberdeen man in the example above. Finally, you put them together - someone who meets all requirements for A, but also does negative B. Is he still in group A? Of course. But someone else in group A could say no, which would be the fallacy.

Now how does that apply to the exchange with the atheist fool? In this case, group A would be "Christians", and issue B would be wickedness/immorality. His claim is that when the Christian asserts that wanton, unrepentant sin reveals someone to not truly be a Christian, he is committing this fallacy. Does this hold up? In order to work, the fallacy requires B to be a completely separate issue from group identity. In other words, whether or not someone is so evil that even an atheist is willing to call it evil must be completely unrelated to whether or not he is actually a Christian.

But if something like, oh, say, submission to the Lordship of Christ is a necessary requirement of Christianity, the objection completely falls apart. (See, among numerous examples, Mat 7:15-27, Romans 6, like, all of 1 John, etc etc.)

A few closing observations.

1) I have no idea how the no-Lordship folks would respond to this. But that's way down on the list of objectionable things about no-Lordship theology, so whatever.

2) Take a gander at the introduction to John Piper's excellent little book, Finally Alive (pdf). Go ahead and read the rest of it too - but for now just the intro will suffice. Note that both the atheist fool and the Barna group begin with the same premise: that someone professing to be a Christian or born again actually is, and that his behavior has no bearing on the validity of the claim. To them, the only requirement for being in A is claiming to be in A. Not surprisingly, both reach a similar anti-Biblical conclusion (that being born again does not result in sanctification). Just something to keep in mind when reading the next Barna book about how we need to reform the church or church growth wizardry or whatever.

Congregational Government

Frank Turk has an awesome post up at Pyro, which included this beauty in the comments. Give 'em a read.

One theme that comes up a few times is the dispute between elder-governed and congregational-governed churches. Not wanting to derail the thread too much, I figured I'd just post this here instead. Plus, it gives a nice easy four-minute update (perfect for those busy work weeks), and the timing is quite cromulent all around, oddly enough.

When we were in Israel, at one of the sites James MacDonald taught a lesson from Mark 15 et al about the many grave injustices involved in sentencing Jesus to death. Seemingly at every step, someone broke the law or acted deceitfully or used extreme cowardice, in order to railroad the innocent man to the cross. In so many ways, this was a spectacular sin.

At one point, he talked about the crowd turning against Jesus. Just days before, they had praised him as he entered Jerusalem through the east gate from the Mount of Olives, shouting Hosannah and greeting him as the king he is. Yet here they were not even a week later, a bloodthirsty mob calling for his death. Quite a sobering look at how fickle and depraved we are, and how it's only by the grace of God that those of us who are in Christ remain in him.

But here James took a minor tangent, and pointed out that this was just par for the course for large crowds in the Bible. The challenge - name a time a right decision was made by the crowd. Let's see... give us a king so we can be just like everyone else... we're too afraid to enter the Promised Land, take us back to Egypt... make us an idol, Aaron... who does Moses think he is, let's follow Korah... crucify him! There may be a counter-example somewhere I can't think of offhand, but so far the congregation's track record is looking exceptionally bad. So commenting on this trend, that in scripture decisions made by the congregation are (almost?) always horrible, James revealed the title of a book he hopes to publish someday:

Congregational Government is from Satan

It's pretty hard to tell where he stands on some of these issues, isn't it? So anyway, aside from the clear commands throughout the NT (particularly in the pastorals) that the church is to be elder-led, this maybe sheds some extra light on the case against congregational rule. Or maybe it doesn't. Whatever, I thought it was an awesome title, even if there's almost zero chance someone will publish it.